New National Dish / Novo Prato Nacional takes the form of a scenario planning report prepared for Portugal that details four directions the national dish (and by extension the nation) may take due to the environmental, economic and social impacts of climate change.)

It is our belief that the value of forecasting is not to find answers, but to ask difficult questions that lead to a range of useful possibilities. In the case of the Portuguese new national dish, our first question was; will Portugal even exist in 2050? Maybe it will have ceded significant authority to corporations headquartered in Brazil and Angola, slipping away from the European Union. Or maybe it will have broken up into smaller autonomous bioregions, tightly linked to new agricultural experiments.

Back in 2013, our organization worked closely with Turismo Portugal and several culinary schools to learn about Portuguese cuisine and develop new recipes that highlight ways in which humans sculpt the planet through their daily food choices.

For our current New National Dish assignment, we’ve used the same principle concept: eaters shape the Earth through the foods and stories we celebrate, cultivate, and propagate. Over the next 30 years, our recipes will adapt to ecological challenges, political & economic uncertainty and changes in supply chains. How, in turn, will these elements of the food system change based on our new preferences, tastes and stories?

Utilizing a scenario planning methodology, we have generated four radically different futures for you to try on, and possibly taste. Each future is based on the idea that a New National Dish needs to be resilient and able to adapt in the face of predicted and unexpected challenges alike. These futures are not predictions, but rather fictions you can use to imagine with or push back against. . . With this, we humbly present for your consideration, New National Dish: Portugal, 2050

From April 11 — October 8, 2018 NEW NATIONAL DISH was exhibited at the MAAT Museum’s exhibition ECO-VISIONARIES.